Audit: FEMA failed to follow contracting rules

WASHINGTON 
The Federal Emergency Management Agency failed to follow some federal contracting rules, making it impossible to know whether the agency got its money's worth during disasters, a government audit found.

In a report released Tuesday, the inspector general for the Homeland Security Department said that auditors looked at 32 disaster contracts from 2007. That year, the president declared 65 major disasters, and FEMA spent $1.5 billion on disaster contracts, including purchasing and delivering ice for hurricane victims.

FEMA was unable to find copies of some contracts. In other cases, information on the contracts was incomplete. None of the contracts was in electronic form, and some contracting officials kept the documents on their desks or filing cabinets, the report said.

FEMA currently is setting up a room in Washington to hold contracts, and 80 percent of the contracts are there. FEMA told the auditors that the agency also is working to resolve many of its contracting problems, according to the report.

The Government Accountability Office, Congress' watchdog, has reported that all homeland security agencies have had challenges managing contracts since the department was created in 2003.

FEMA has been criticized for contract mismanagement and abuse during 2005's Hurricane Katrina. A 2007 report by House Democrats found that the government awarded 70 percent of its contracts for Katrina work without full competition, wasting hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars in the process.

"FEMA's contracting system has long been plagued by inefficiencies that hamper service delivery to disaster victims and waste taxpayer money," said Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security. "As FEMA's new leadership takes charge, they must resolve the problems created by the previous administration."

In February, the inspector general asked FEMA to provide by late May detailed plans about how it will correct its contracting policies. In a letter Tuesday to FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate, Thompson asked whether those plans have been completed. Thompson told The Associated Press the plans are 30 days overdue.

A representative of FEMA could not immediately be reached for comment.